Written In Blood
by Karigan Rohanna
Summary: Post CoS, Ginny attempts to understand what has happened to her. Slightly dark.


Written In Blood   
Author: Karigan Rohanna (ladyofgondor@diaryland.com)   
Feedback: greatly desired.   
Written: June 28, 2003   
Summery: Ginny is home after her first year... and no one understands what has happened to her... not even herself.   
Warnings: PG, Dark, CoS spoilers.   
A/N: For all of you who have not understood the things in your life. Thanks Sar. 

Ginny Weasley is hurting herself again. Her family knows this, and they try to deny the fact she is. They don't know why she draws on her hand with ink, or why the skin is inflamed and red around the lines of ink, or why the ink doesn't wash off... but they don't understand Little Ginny these days. Something about her has changed.   
And Ginny knows they know, because she has locked her door, and refuses to hear them, and because they cannot enter her room, her sanctuary, her haven... her place of pain. They would try to comfort her, but she doesn't want comfort. They would try to make the pain go away, but that is the last thing she wants-- the pain is what she needs to think... something extreme enough to cancel out the pain other places.   
There is a rift inside, and Ginny feels like an empty book. An empty book is a voiceless book... empty pages are an untold story, and an untold story is never understood. And Ginny wants to be understood. She wants it enough that it makes her head ache and the tears flow.   
She holds her head as it aches, and she buries her tears deep within a handkerchief-- but that doesn't stop either the aching or the tears. They continue on, as the night continues on, and she knows she is dying.   
She can only be dying, she has decided. Only death can be this painful. Only death can make her fingertips bleed red ink, and her quill pen write in blood... what is happening to her? Why does she keep blacking out the way she does to wake with her face wet with tears and the pages of her book menacingly empty? Why doesn't anyone help her?   
Can she trust no one? They tell her not to be silly-- no, her pen doesn't write in blood. Then why does it dry dark? She must be bleeding ink when she cuts herself to try and make the pain in her head go away-- it stays red for days. Did she become a book, that she can only bleed in ink? Is the quill pen her true being-- is she, at the moment, gripping between her fingers her true self, the reality of what she is?   
She's so confused.   
Why doesn't someone help her?   
No one is there for her. Tom is gone-- and Tom could explain everything. No one admits that she has issues... but Tom did. He told her, 'Yes, Ginny, something is wrong. You have to figure out what.' He believed in her too-- 'You can do it' Tom told her. 'You are brave.' And then, she'd thought she _was_ brave. No one admits that the marks upon her hands are deliberate cuts-- they are all pretending she's Ginny-- an introverted, maybe a little upset Ginny, but normal... and she's not. Tom never pretended... he saw through to her, he let her come out, he listened...   
But Tom was a lie, she tells herself. A shadow, a lie, not the truth. Her family is the truth... Harry saving her, that was the truth... she did need to be saved. Tom would have killed her. She has been told that a thousand times... but she can't believe it. Tom understood-- Tom wouldn't hurt her on purpose, would he?   
Tom couldn't be Voldemort. It doesn't make sense...   
Oh, but it does, a savage, mature voice says in the back of her head. He hurt you, and friends don't hurt friends-- but dark lords hurt faithful acolytes. And Harry Potter, who isn't even your friend, saved you from being hurt-- and are you even grateful? No, you selfish little brat. Your family is trying to love you, and you are just too selfish. Grow up.   
The thoughts makes the pain her forehead redouble. Is this what Harry feels like when his scar aches?   
She cuts deeper into her flesh with the finely sharpened edge of the quill. The prickle of pain makes the aching in her head reduce to a mere twinge. She can breathe, she can think. Yes, the mature voice is correct-- she is being immature. Ginny decides to listen to what else the voice has to say. The line continues down the back of her hand. Its ink coming out, not blood...   
But when she tries to write with the ink in her journal, it glistens the sinister red before drying to the brown of old blood, while the lines on the back of her hand dries with the color of ink, and washes off like ink, even when they are no longer damp and smearable.   
Ginny doesn't understand why its mixed up. Her life is not a page in a book-- the book is not her body. She is not some character of fable... she isn't Tom, who hurt her and betrayed her and made her do things she didn't want to do because she needed to be understood...   
She's not.   
Not Tom.   
But not Ginny either. Not the Ginny her family thinks she is. Not the Ginny everyone at school thought she was.   
Who is she?   
She's Virginia, she tells herself. She's Virginia, and she's hurting herself, even though she doesn't want to, and that has to stop. And she can make herself stop, and fix all her problems, and understand who she is, if she'll just put the sharpened quill down and write it out-- really write it, on pages for the world to see, not just in her journal, which is coded and locked and impossible for anyone-- except Tom-- to read. Then she will be flesh and blood, and her words will be ink, and she'll exist outside of the journal once more, as she used to.   
But part of her is still bound to the pages of the book-- even this book, which is not the same as the one Harry destroyed, binds her. Part of her thinks she'll be understood if she suffers enough. Part of Tom remains in her, alive and well, forcing her to believe that if she sacrifices, and if she bleeds, and if it hurts, then someone, somewhere, will understand, and their understanding will be enough to make the pain better.   
But she knows it is a lie.   
Tom was a lie.   
Ginny just wants to be understood.   
Her family loves her, but they don't understand. They think it is the same, but it isn't.   
Ginny just wants to be understood.   
But who can understand her, when she can't understand herself?   
Virginia, mature and in control, sets the quill down and stands up and unlocks the door. She walks downstairs, sees the faces of her family, and says nothing at all to the fear and questioning in their eyes. They do not understand, and do not deserve to be told when they will not understand.   
The ink on Virginia's hand shimmers as it dries-- Ginny has been drawing snakes upon her skin.   
Calmly, Virginia washes the still damp ink off, but the outline of the snake remains.   
No matter how hard she tries, Ginny can't escape, can't erase, and can't go unchanged after the Chamber of Secrets. 


End file.
